Jelly Roll
Take three eggs; five tablespoons of milk; on. cup of sugar; one and one-half cups of flour; one teaspoon of baking powder; one tablespoon of lemon extract; one-fourth teaspoon of salt; one glass of jelly. Separate the eggs, beat the yolks light, add the sugar, stir well and add first the milk and then the flour and lemon. Place the salt in the whites, beat until dry, and whip them into the flour mixture. Butter a long flat baking-pan of the size generally used in roasting meats. Stir the baking powder into the batter and immediately turn into the pan. The batter should be put one-fourth of an inch deep, for if thicker the cake will not roll nicely. Bake for six or eight minutes in a moderate oven, watching closely, as it bakes quickly. When done remove from the oven, and when cool enough to handle, lay a cloth upon the baking board and turn out the sheet or cake upon it. With a sharp knife score the crusty sides of the cake to assist in rolling up. Spread the jelly over the surface, roll up and wrap the cloth about the roll to keep it in shape. If too thick to roll, the batter has been too deep in the pan. Cut the cake into three parts and lay one upon the other with the jelly between. This makes a most delicious layer cake. Frost with a soft icing, sprinkling with a layer of cocoanut.
A plain sponge baked thin and rolled — the method is sound, but two of the original directions work against a good roll.
- Roll it warm, not coolRoll it warm -- The recipe says to turn the sheet out "when cool enough to handle" and to score the crusty edges to help it bend. "Cool enough to handle" still means warm, so the original is not far from current practice: turn the sheet onto a sugared cloth soon after it leaves the oven, roll it up cloth and all while it is still warm, and unroll it only to spread the jelly. A sponge left to cool fully is much more likely to crack along the outside of the curve, whatever the scoring.
- The ovenThe recipe gives no temperature, only "a moderate oven"; that term is conventionally read as somewhere around 350F, though a quarter-inch sponge baking in six to eight minutes suggests a hotter oven, nearer 375-400F, so the surface sets before the interior dries. Watch it: it is done when the top springs back and the edges just pull from the pan.
- The pan"A long flat baking-pan of the size generally used in roasting meats" is close to what we now call a jelly-roll or half-sheet pan, roughly 10 x 15 inches with a shallow rim. Butter it and line it with parchment; the recipe asks only that the pan be buttered.
- One glass of jellyA jelly tumbler of the period commonly held six to eight ounces, so somewhere around three-quarters of a cup to a cup. Warm it and beat it smooth before spreading, or it will tear the sponge; err on the lower side, which spreads more evenly.
- Lemon extractA full tablespoon of modern extract is harsh and can taste medicinal. One to two teaspoons is plenty, or use the grated zest of a lemon.
- Baking powder lastThe instruction to stir the baking powder in at the very end and turn the batter into the pan immediately reflects early powders that lost lift quickly. Modern double-acting powder is better sifted with the flour, but the underlying point holds: this batter should not stand.
- Beating the whites "until dry"Take them to firm, glossy peaks, not literally dry — over-beaten whites break into curds and fold in as lumps that bake into pale streaks.
- YieldOne sheet, rolled, gives 8 to 10 slices. The variation at the end — cutting the sheet into three, stacking with jelly, and icing with soft frosting and coconut — makes a small layer cake serving about the same number.
The rolled jelly cake belongs to a family of thin sponges that appear to have spread through American and British cookbooks over the second half of the nineteenth century, a period when chemical leavening and more reliable ovens made a quick, eggy batter easier to manage. It was usually called jelly cake or jelly roll here and Swiss roll in Britain, a name with no documented connection to Switzerland. The Butterick books were published by a pattern company for a readership of home sewers and housekeepers, and the tone shows it: the pan is identified by what the reader already owns rather than by dimension, the jelly is measured in the tumbler it was put up in, and the recipe closes by offering a second cake from the same sheet in case the roll fails. That last line is the most honest sentence on the page: the failed roll becomes a layer cake, and nothing is wasted.